I’ve been sitting here awhile, with no idea what to write about this week. I’ve alternated between scrolling various news sites and staring at a blank screen with a blinking cursor. None of the headlines were generating enough righteous indignation to fuel a good rant.
Then Boris Johnson gave a speech.
Thank you, Boris.
I didn’t watch the speech. I can’t watch BoJo speak live. He speaks like someone took a bag of magnetic poetry tiles, threw it at the fridge and read the result out loud. I know the meaning of every individual word he says, except the bits where he devolves into Latin, but the point of his speech passes me by. So I read the highlights afterwards.
I think he was trying to be stern. He warned about the Covid 4th wave sweeping across Europe. He proffered the threat of Christmas restrictions as if it was some sort of bogeyman. He would not rule out the possibility of another lockdown. The problem is, I don’t believe his threats. If he won’t implement the simple restrictions of ‘Plan B,’ just Mask mandates, limits on group size, social distancing, because he fears the anger of his donors, he certainly hasn’t the backbone to order another lockdown.
He admonished everyone to get booster jabs, said that people will not be considered fully vaccinated without a 3rd shot.
The vaccination rollout is the ONE success of Boris Johnson’s government and it is his sole strategy to get through the rest of the pandemic. He’s been banging on about boosters for a while, blaming the rise in cases on people not getting the third shot. That’s unfair, since over 40’s only just became eligible for boosters, and the NHS will only offer them 6 months after your second shot. I got my 2nd jab at the end of May, ahead of time for my age group. I can get my booster for Christmas. No matter how much Boris shakes his finger and scolds, I cannot make the calendar go faster.
And neither can BoJo, as much as he wishes to. ‘Operation Rampdown’ was leaked to the newspapers today. In the plan, people who test positive for Covid would no longer have to isolate for 10 days. The government would no longer offer the £500 supplement to low-income people who have to isolate. The government would also no longer offer free testing, urging the public to use private companies. Basically, the pandemic will still be a thing, but the government is not going to pay for it anymore.
They want to implement this plan by April 2022.
One article describes Health experts as ‘walking away from the government.’ Presumably, on their way to a doctor who can treat the concussions they’ve all gotten from banging their heads against the wall.
As much as BoJo and his merry band of scoundrels and thieves (see last week’s rant) would like the pandemic to be over, as much as we all would like the pandemic to be over, we’re not there yet. Things are improving, treatments are improving, but it all takes time. This isn’t a novel, where you can skip to the last chapter and see the resolution. It’s more like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure; where you have to keep making choices, making decisions and going back and forth to get to the happy ending.
So That Happened 